Yishna—on Corisanthe Main
The screen showed the distinct words:
HATE… SKIRL SAND… IMPACTED… FIRE
Keleon, the OCT who had heard those words in his mind, had told her in detail the sensations and thoughts accompanying them. He had experienced the usual fantasies, some violent, some sexual. He described to her how he imagined setting at each other's throats two OCTs he knew had had him thrown out of the Cognisants—yet another sect aboard this station—then went on to describe to her how he had vividly visualised buggering her over a console in a study unit. After this Keleon had taken the opportunity to suggest that this might be something they could try—strictly in the interests of research. Yishna had subsequently dismissed him and had used her consoles for more prosaic activities.
The workings of the human brain were intricate indeed, sometimes annoyingly illogical to Yishna when compared with computers; but thus far that lump of pinkish organic matter was the only instrument sensitive enough to detect bleed-over. In her first year aboard Corisanthe Main she had worked on developing ways of recording the workings of the brain. Delving into the research of others, she mapped its function and learnt how to interpret electrical and biochemical readings as thoughts. From this she managed to create audio recordings of bleed-over and listened with growing disappointment to the disconnected and sometimes half-formed words that seemed merely the product of random selection from some lexicon. Further studies revealed that these thoughts arose out of deeper functions of the brain; the words being merely the bubbles bursting at the surface of a pool, and therefore only an indication of deeper activity. She did, however, create complex linguistic programs in order to analyse these first recordings by comparing content with source. Some interesting connections arose, but never enough to understand the purpose of bleed-over, if it even possessed one.
Keleon had become the source of more information, for he was the first to volunteer for surgery and try out the new hardware. A year ago Yishna had designed both hardware capable of surviving in the hostile environment of the human body and the surgical techniques for installing it. She often went back to his file in search of inspiration, or in the hope of seeing something new. As she studied the cladograms of synaptic activity, applied comparative programs and mapped the course of thoughts through his brain, she mused and speculated. Perhaps bleed-over, weakened almost to non-existence outside Ozark Containment, was the actual cause of all the flourishing sects aboard this station? In fact she felt sure it was the cause of most of the strangeness aboard Corisanthe Main. Telepathic inductance, the OCTs called it. She did not believe that was what it was, but for her it was no longer the issue. The Worm affected humans who got close. She also felt certain that the definitely emotional elements of bleed-over indicated the Worm was self-aware—that was the issue.
Yishna closed the file, stood up and walked to the window of the study unit, to gaze down into Centre Cross Chamber. As always, there was much work in progress: old equipment in the containment cylinders being replaced, refurbished; new designs of scanner being brought in for trial; and as ever the perpetual checking of security. After watching for a little while, she returned to her touch-screens, keyed into the networks, and began checking on published research and looking for news of new developments.
Unlike others working here Yishna frequently published her research for, unlike those others, knowledge not status was her goal, and by publishing quickly she received much useful feedback. It did not concern her that other scientists frequently took her work and ran with it, that around her a whole network of R & D had sprung up, and that some of them awaited her publications with something approaching desperation. Only recently had she learned that both Fleet and Combine scientific teams were developing her hardware—surgically implanted inside the brain—for the purpose of controlling ship and satellite systems, for the fast analysis of information, for many operations that shortened and made more efficient the link between thought and action. She had watched with interest the trials of new surgically implanted communications hardware; how Fleet tacoms—ship's communications, logistics and tactical officers—became capable of comprehending multiple visual and audio inputs, and then acting on them with computer speed.
There was some breaking news about the surgical division of certain brain functions and some further development of the synaptic connection. Though both of these were of interest and directly applicable to her own work, Yishna felt a sudden weariness and unaccustomed boredom. Idly working her touch-screen, she allowed her mind to wander. Remembering something Dalepan had said earlier, she wondered what would actually happen here if the Worm broke free? During fumarole breaches, those computers affected ended up scrambled and running some decidedly odd code, but even that—like bleed-over—seemed only to hover on the point of making sense, but never did. Dalepan had told her about a physical breach occurring near the end of the War, when the unlikely failure of three reactors simultaneously resulted in a brief power outage to Ozark Three. This in turn resulted in the similarly brief collapse of the magnetic containment field inside the canister itself, and the Worm directly touching the sidewall. He had elaborated no further.
Yishna looked up and realised that, almost without thinking, she had dropped from accessing the networks and instead opened a port into Corisanthe Main's library. Her interest stimulated, she began to do some research.
The touch against the side of the canister had resulted in the slow spread of something like a metal-eating fungus. That was the kind of nano-technology they studied endlessly, very often understood, but simply had no way of creating for themselves. It was, many opined, something you could not build without it having been created as a part of your science. A desert nomad could understand a computer, but without the infrastructure, the tooling and much else beside, he could never build one. Such creations were the culmination of a long chain of development.
The reports she read then went on to detail how, avoiding the implementation of any of the main 'Emergency Ozark Protocols', an OCT had entered the affected cylinder and sterilised the infestation with a laser. Later, OCTs cut away this section from the canister and replaced it with new metal. They also replaced all the equipment within the surrounding cylinder and thereafter ran constant checks for nanite infestation.
Emergency Ozark Protocols…Yishna searched the library for further mention of them. She found only one: EOP Three would only be applied if we were unable to evacuate the station—
It was just that one line remaining from a partially deleted file. Further searching referred her to 'Gneiss eyes only' files stored in the system under heavy encryption, beyond the scope of the access codes in her control baton. She had encountered these files many times before and knew that any foolish tampering with them would result in station security officers dragging her off to face the Director. However, on those previous occasions she had felt insufficiently curious to know what was hidden in them. Now she was, and when it came to cracking encryption there was probably only one person better at it than herself, and he was busily climbing the ranks aboard Ironfist.